Saturday 3 October 2020

What is contact tracing, and how does it work with COVID-19?

What is contact tracing, and how does it work with COVID-19?

Radish seeds, meats and cheeses launched to space station

A space station cargo ship rocketed into orbit Friday carrying a 360-degree camera for spacewalking, radish seeds for growing and a smorgasbord of fancy meats and cheeses for feasting.

Madrid starts partial virus lockdown amid political scuffle

Madrid awoke Saturday to its first day under a partial lockdown, with police controlling travel in and out of the Spanish capital that has become Europe's biggest hot spot for the second wave of the coronavirus.

Green-oriented NextEra nears ExxonMobil in market value

In a sign of shifting fortunes in the energy business, green-oriented power company NextEra Energy on Friday sparred with petroleum giant Exxon Mobil for market capitalization supremacy.

Subsidized cars help low-income families economically, socially

For one low-income woman, not having a car meant long commutes on public transit with her children in tow, sometimes slogging through cold or inclement weather. But after buying a subsidized car through a Maryland-based nonprofit, she was able to move to a home located farther from bus stops, send her children to better schools and reach less expensive medical services.

DECT in the ED: better diagnoses, less follow-up, more savings

According to an open-access article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), dual-energy CT (DECT) added value to routine interpretation of emergency department (ED) imaging studies by increasing radiologists' diagnostic confidence, leading to a reduction in downstream imaging and associated costs.

The mode of detection of high-risk breast cancers is linked to patient prognosis

Breast cancers that are detected in the interval between national screening programme mammograms have a worse prognosis than those detected at the time of a screening, even if they have the same biology, according to research presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference on Saturday.

Antarctic Peninsula at warmest in decades: study

The year 2020 is the hottest in the Antarctic Peninsula in the past three decades, a study by the University of Santiago de Chile out Friday found.

Trump hospitalized for COVID treatment, campaign grounded

President Donald Trump was hospitalized Friday and given an experimental COVID-19 treatment, but said he was "well," following bombshell news he had contracted the virus, knocking him off the campaign trail a month from the US election.

Nobel Prizes and COVID-19: Slow, basic science may pay off

While the world wants flashy quick fixes for everything, especially massive threats like the coronavirus and global warming, next week's Nobel Prizes remind us that in science, slow and steady pays off.

What you need to know about Regeneron's COVID-19 treatment

President Donald Trump was treated Friday for COVID-19 with a high-dose of the experimental antibody drug developed by the US biotech firm Regeneron.

India virus deaths pass 100,000

Deaths from the novel coronavirus in India passed 100,000 on Saturday, official data showed as the pandemic continued to rage across the world's second most populous country.

'Hi, this is the army': In Spain, troops tackle track-and-trace

"Hi, this is the army: you're going to have to quarantine."

Friday 2 October 2020

Influence of bots on spreading vaccine information not as big as you think

The influence of bots on vaccine-related discussions on social media is a lot smaller than we think, with only a minor fraction of information from bots reaching active social media users.

Enhancing blood sugar control boosts brain health for people with type 2 diabetes

Controlling blood sugar levels improved the ability to clearly think, learn and remember among people with type 2 diabetes who were overweight, a new study shows. But losing weight, especially for people who were obese, and increasing physical activity produced mixed results.

HER2+ breast cancer patients live longer if drugs given before surgery eradicate tumour

Final analysis of results from a randomised clinical trial of lapatinib and trastuzumab given before surgery in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer has found that women who had no signs of residual disease after treatment (known as a pathological complete response, pCR) survived longer without the cancer returning than patients who did not. This was more likely to happen in patients who received the two anti-cancer drugs together, rather than as single agents.

Researchers reveal which benign breast disease is most likely to develop into cancer

Benign breast diseases (BBD), which are non-cancerous disorders of the breast, such as lumps, are known to increase the chances of subsequent breast cancer. Now a team of Spanish researchers have found that the way BBD is detected as part of a national screening programme is an indication of which are more likely to become cancerous.

Risk of heart disease in breast cancer patients can be predicted from routine scans

Automated analysis of breast cancer patients' routine scans can predict which women have a greater than one in four risk of going on to develop cardiovascular disease, according to research presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference.

Face masks unlikely to cause over-exposure to CO2, even in patients with lung disease

New research findings contradict statements linking wearing face masks to carbon dioxide poisoning by trapping CO2. During the COVID-19 pandemic the wearing of face masks has become a highly political issue with some individuals falsely claiming that wearing face masks may be putting people's health at risk. The study published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society shows otherwise.

Thursday 1 October 2020

COVID-19 pandemic has created flood of potentially substandard research

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a flood of potentially substandard research amid the rush to publish, with a string of papers retracted or under a cloud and a surge in submissions to pre-print servers where fewer quality checks are made, a leading ethicist has warned in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Men predominate in 85%+ COVID-19 decision-making/advisory bodies globally

Men predominate in more than 85% of COVID-19 decision-making and key advisory bodies around the globe, with gender parity in just 3.5%, reveals an analysis of the available data, published in the online journal BMJ Global Health.